I was watching a dialog take place on LinkedIn recently where an autistic self advocate was posting about the harm caused by parents who teach their autistic kids to behave according to the social norms of society. The idea is that we shouldn’t teach autistic kids to behave the way society expects them to, instead we should teach society to be more accepting of all people. Another autistic woman (whom I know) chimed in to say that she teaches her autistic daughter both how to be successful in the world and also to be accepting of herself; to understand when it’s OK to “be me” and when it’s better to “mask”. This sparked a fascinating discussion that, happily, didn’t turn in the kind of either/or polarized debate that happens a lot on social media. It made me want to explore this topic as I reflect on my own life and my evolving understanding of how autism has impacted it.
One of the most enduring recollections I have from my young adulthood - in the first few years after I left home - was this constant sensation of “why didn’t anybody ever tell me that?” Friends in college, some professors, and later a serious girlfriend, would say things like, “you’re funny” or they would let out an exasperated sigh, or they would say something like, “Yes, I would like a glass of water, thank you for asking” when I hadn't asked. If I probed further, they would explain that I was doing something weird, or rude, or that I was ignoring a widely known social norm. Like, when people come over to your apartment, it’s nice to offer to take their coats, and then offer them something to drink. Or, when greeting someone, ask them how they are doing (especially if they asked you). Or, when in conversation with people, it’s nice to ask them questions and express interest in them, rather than just being quiet and speaking only when someone asks you a question, or only talking about your interests. There are many, many more examples. I would usually wonder, “Why didn’t my parents ever teach me this?”.
Only much later did I realize my lack of understanding social norms was not because my parents didn’t teach me (not to mention teachers and other people I spent time around). It was because the social norms never made sense to me, and I was slow to catch on. I wouldn’t pick them up from observing others, as many do, and if someone pointed them out to me I would think, “That seems silly, why would I do that?” I vividly remember a girl in high school explaining to me that when someone asks you how you are, you are supposed to just say, “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” You are not supposed to ramble on for five minutes ruminating about all the mixed emotions taking place in your brain. Because she was so direct about it, and because I really felt like she was doing me a favor by explaining this phenomenon, I proceeded to start to make use of it. And, it made greeting people much easier!
It wasn’t until my early twenties that I really began to realize that if I adopted social norms my life would have less friction. It took years of practice - and I’m still practicing today - but I eventually learned how to act like a “normal person”. This was wildly effective for me and I think has been a critical part of my career success. I could never have achieved the level of professional advancement I’ve had without learning how to act my way through a large variety of situations - from meetings, to happy hours, to formal dinners, to customer meetings, to the long stretches of time spent with colleagues on business trips.
In my personal life, though, this “acting” has been problematic. It works in a professional setting because you don’t have to really get to know your colleagues. They only see you for limited amounts of time, when you can sustain the acting. In the world of personal relationships, people see more sides of you. I can’t sustain the act for very long before I get tired. When I meet someone new, I am motivated to act the way I think they expect or want me to (I’m not always correct about what I think they want, however). I was good at dating in my early 30s, and I can be great at a cocktail party (as long as I’m drinking), or when meeting people for lunch. The problem is if I become close to people, if they see me for more than an hour or so at a time, as I get more comfortable around them, I start to be more myself. When I am being myself, it may feel to the other person like I am someone other than the person they met originally. Thinking about it from their perspective, I’m actually not the person they thought I was. They thought the “actor” was the real me. So, as I get more comfortable, they might get less comfortable.
I’ve had a lot of friendships (and several romantic relationships) that were intense, progressed quickly, and then ended quite suddenly. The endings came about either because I was too intense and wanted to be with or talk to the other person all the time (I’m an all or nothing kind of person, and 1:1 interactions are the best kind of for me), or because I would get exhausted of doing the things that drew me together with this person (like going to concerts, hosting dinner parties, or other social things), and the other person would start to get annoyed and frustrated because I was no longer interested in doing the things that made them think I was an interesting person in the first place. If I met someone I liked (either in a platonic or a romantic sense), after hanging out a few times, I might say something like, “I’m kind of an asshole, just so you know.” They would look at me confused and disbelieving and say something like, “I don’t think so.” And I would smile and think to myself “You’ll see.” What I meant by “asshole” was “somebody you are not going to like”. For most of my life I have entered any kind of relationship with another person (friendship, working relationship, or romantic relationship) thinking that it would be inevitable that the person would stop wanting to hang out, work with, or be with me once they really got to know me.
I say all of this because I believe that all relationships have to be based on truth in order to thrive. Because I am a very honest person (with a few notable exceptions from my youth), I’ve always felt like I was being authentic. What I have been realizing since my autism diagnosis, though, is that even though I’m honest in the sense of always telling the truth, it doesn’t mean I’m representing myself honestly. Masking, the term many people use to describe the kind of acting I’m talking about, is tricky. It’s not that I was always pretending to be someone else willfully, like an actor would (although I did do that sometimes), it’s more that I was hiding my true self even from me - my masking was so deep that I didn’t know I was doing it. So, when a relationship would end with the other person being frustrated that I didn’t want to do the things that drew us together in the first place, I would be just as confused as they were. I didn’t realize that as I started to be more comfortable around the other person, I started to be more my natural self, and therefore stopped pretending to be interested in the kinds of things the other person found appealing. Instead, I thought that people just stopped wanting to hang out with me after a while (because something is wrong with me, or because I’m “an asshole”).
The paradox I see in masking is that in our society right now, I think masking for autistic people will make it much easier for them to navigate careers and find professional success (especially if they are in a corporate field), but masking is also detrimental to mental health and can cause painful, exhausting experiences. Anecdotally, a lot of the autistic people I’ve met this past year are entrepreneurs. They work for themselves, either doing something creative (like writing), or doing freelance work on their own terms. This is a great way to avoid the paradox I have experienced, where masking has been an essential part of my success in a corporation. But, it also feels limiting to me that the only choice we have is either to mask, or to be a freelancer or entrepreneur.
As I write these words, I can feel myself disagreeing with my own thoughts, and that makes it easy for me to understand why this topic can be the subject of polarizing debates. There is the ideal that I think we should aspire to and be given, that everyone can be themselves and find success and acceptance in society; and the reality of the world as it is, where there is an established social order with social norms, and success (or even just acceptance) requires assimilation to it. I am both grateful for the self advocates who are pushing hard to change the status quo, and also empathetic with those who feel the easier path to them is to learn how to operate in the world as it is rather than fight for change.